"When I was cultivating at the Green-Hill Mountain, your great-grandmother hadn't even come into this world yet!"*

Firecloud laughed as well, not because he felt it to be ridiculous, but rather because he was relieved. A fiendishly gifted cultivator added on with a Core Formation arcane effort… He didn't think it was a laughing matter at all.

It was a pity… that he wouldn't be able to see it for himself.

"Run!" He roared, and in a flash, Vermillion Snow suddenly cast him off her claw!

"Detonating your qi sea?!" She looked at Firecloud in shock. Never would she have imagined that he would be so unyielding. Just now, she had felt the qi sea within his body come to a sudden boil. This was the prelude of the qi sea's self-detonation!

Xu Yangyi stiffly clenched his teeth and headed behind Vermillion Snow without a second word, but her nine tails madly rushed to block off the entrance!

Just as he took a step, the body-wide pain, the pain of the absence of qi, the pain of his heart — all the aftermath of his battle with Chu Zhaonan — enveloped his entire body like a tide! His eyes reddened and he unflinchingly pressed his teeth together. Suddenly using his leg to tread forward, he exercised all of his strength to rush towards the entrance!

The opportunity would only exist in this instant!

This twinkling that Firecloud had traded his life for wasn't for him to take revenge now! Rather, it was for later on as he arrived at Foundation Establishment and stepped into Core Formation to visit this enmity once again!

"Bang!" Less than two seconds later, a small mushroom cloud exploded in front of Vermillion Snow. Following her miserable howl, Xu Yangyi didn't turn back but instead drew upon his full strength to rush urgently towards the entrance!

Behind him, a violent shock wave proliferated all around. The clothes on Xu Yangyi's whole body were suddenly rushed forward by it! It was as if the center of his back had been struck by a hammer, and he was unable to put up any resistance to vomiting a mouthful of blood!

Firecloud has passed on.

The eight Foundation Establishment seniors, at this moment, had all fallen without exception. In order to allow all of the people of Nantong Province to escape, they had not pulled back a single step.

He had to move faster! He needed to speed up again!

Firecloud had already done the utmost he could accomplish; Xu Yangyi had to flee!

Closer… He was getting even closer. He didn't know how he was actually capable of running so quickly without spiritual force, but the door was a distance of several tens of meters away, barely apart by twenty meters! He charged forth with the wish to survive!

"Swish…" At this moment, a petite silhouette appeared before him.

"Thump…" He halted his footsteps without delay and swiftly drew back. At this split second, he instantly recognized it was Vermillion Snow's human form. This was because the bloody smell on her body and her terrifying might were one in the same!

"What're you rushing for?" A jade hand waved softly and was accompanied by gentle laughter like a silver bell: "He was doing nothing more than teasing you. Did you believe the self-detonation of an insignificant middle-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator could harm me? What ridiculous naivety."

"Bang!" The hand appeared weak and powerless, yet seemed to carry a tremendous force that could topple mountains and overturn seas! Xu Yangyi had already crossed both of his arms to protect his chest, but he had been sent directly flying several tens of meters without the slightest concern!

"Crack!" The bones of his entire body seemed to like they were going to break, and he painfully covered his chest. With a rip, the wound that had been healed recently by Firecloud tore open again, even more severe than the one from an hour ago.

"Cough…" All that he hacked out was blood, and he silently surveyed the state of his body. This blow had at the minimum fractured half of the bones in his entire body… Speech came as an impossibility to him and all that spilled forth as he opened his mouth was blood.

He was struggling to stand up, but just as he straightened his figure, a slender jade foot stepped on his back.

"Boom!" Like a massive 1000-catty hammer had struck him, he was firmly trampled down beneath her foot, unable to lift a finger.

Vermillion Snow hadn't seen it, but because Xu Yangyi was pressed down, glimmers of golden light had flashed fleetingly from his seven apertures. It seemed as if inside his body… there was some hidden object that radiated golden light.

"Let me guess… You're this graduation's paragon?" Vermillion Snow didn't give any mind to the mixture of blood and mud all over his body and laughed dazzlingly: "Take a look, there's no one here now. The annoyances have all died. I killed several thousand people this time; shouldn't I take a bit of interest from your body?"

A long snow-white leg appeared before Xu Yangyi and Vermillion Snow crouched down. Using her hand to raise his chin, she gently helped him push aside his hair: "I want to ask you a question."

Xu Yangyi's gaze looked forward. Vermillion Snow's left hand had raised his chin and her right hand was incessantly spinning a jade chest.

Seeing his gaze, Vermillion Snow said matter of factly: "Do you want this item? That won't do. Old Ghost Firecloud was protecting it to his death… It's sure to be a good item."

That belongs to me… Xu Yangyi closed his eyes. This time, he wanted to kill. He wanted to take chop off this demon's head, place it in the Unrivaled Beneath the Heavens Arena, and use her blood to offer sacrifices to all of today's fallen martyrs.

"Be good now, it won't do to behave too greedily." Her gaze followed all the way down from Xu Yangyi's pectorals to his abdominals, and she extended her foot to rub against them in passing: "Say, weren't they idiots? They were fully aware they were going to die, but they still obstructed me?"

Xu Yangyi's Adam's apple stirred, and he closed his eyes, not speaking. It wasn't that he didn't want to say anything, but rather his entire body from head to toe was surprisingly in pain!

It was a sensation like being set aflame, a scorching terror!

Vermillion Snow didn't know that he didn't have qi right now, but he knew. With his constitution several times better than a normal person's, he had been slammed from the highest point of elevation of the several tens of meters tall of audience stands into the arena ring! A great circle of spider webs broke open, yet he actually hadn't died?

"Fuck you…" After a while, he finally had a sliver of qi and used it without the slightest hesitation for his most familiar insult.

"Crack" Before his voice had even fallen, Vermillion Snow picked up his broad hand and effortlessly broke one of his fingers: "I'll say it again."

"Weren't they idiots?"

Severe anguish spread into Xu Yangyi's brain, but he didn't shout, but rather looked unwaveringly into Vermillion Snow's emotionless eyes. The muscles of his cheeks stirred and he said word for word: "Listen up."

"Fuck you." He laughed fiercely, yet the corner of his mouth was teeming with a delighted arc: "F-U-C-K Y-O-U."**

"Got it? Whore."

If he was going to die, he absolutely wouldn't choose to go down kneeling!

Vermillion Snow sighed gently, raising her head to look at the already scar-covered Unrivaled Beneath the Heavens Arena: "The first time I saw you, I felt you were carrying an extremely familiar, but extremely loathsome scent to me…so I will gently remind you…"

Letting go of Xu Yangyi's face, she took her hand back, laughed, and calmly snapped another one of his fingers: "Little Boy, be obedient, I'm giving you another chance. Say that you're my servant and then kneel on the ground and kiss my feet. I will grant you bliss."

"Haha…" Xu Yangyi didn't even heavily groan as he heard his finger snapping like a firework. The ten fingers linked to his heart, yet the pain didn't cause him to scream at all, only bringing blood and laughter.***

The burning within his body… was becoming hotter and hotter. If not for his whole body covered from head to toe in blood presently, it would've long become visible.

Inside his body, there seemed to be something erupting. Something that his skin, his flesh, and his bones were unable to obstruct. He truly was without strength; to say more would be superfluous.

In the next second, her hand thrust straight into Xu Yangyi's heart. His gaze shrunk and he didn't even feel the pain. He only felt his heart burst and his blood cease to circulate, an ice-cold whole-body sensation.

Am I going to die...

His defeated eyes carried a heavy irreconciliation.

Am I going to die like this?

He had just seized the paragonship… and now he would be killed here by such a demon?

"Swish!" At this instant, his entire body suddenly erupted with a golden radiance! The golden rays illuminated the entire Unrivaled Beneath the Heavens Arena! It spilled forth from within his qi sea like the descent of a holy child! Not only was it Xu Yangyi who was knocking on death's doorstep sent into a daze, but even Vermillion Snow was wholly stunned!

What was this?

Xu Yangyi didn't know. He only felt… that within these several seconds, his entire body had unexpectedly underwent an astonishing restoration! This was a kind of restoration that transcended all he knew about pill elixirs! In nearly a twinkling, he had recovered to his initial state!

"This…" He even nonchalantly raised his hand, looking in shock at everything that occurred before him, which had surpassed his imagination.

Vermillion Snow slightly gaped. She who had lived for several centuries had never seen such a spectacle. With her own hands, she had pinched his heart to rupture, so how could this be possible?!

"Buzz…" In an instant, the golden rays become more and more magnificent! Xu Yangyi finally discovered from where these golden lights were coming from! It came from above his qi sea to outside of his body from a palm-sized golden chest that was frantically trembling!

A droning sound like Buddhist chants seemed to be in disarray, yet came through with an extreme rhythm from the chest. Every ray of light appeared like the red afterglow of the heaven's horizons, the color of the setting sun at night, a boundless magnificence with such holy purity that it caused none to dare look closely at it!

It was a kind of indescribable heavenly might. A mere glance at it and one would know that while these rays held not a shred of a power, they dared not to even touch them at all.

As the chest rolled over and over about, Vermillion Snow couldn't help but to seize the jade chest and recoil. She sensed… the object inside the upper half of this chest, this item… was very terrible, extremely terrible… so that it even caused her to feel a coldness birthed on her back! Moreover… this sensation was incredibly familiar!

Yes… That was right! What caused her to glance many times at this brat as he entered the branch was this certain feeling! This sensation… caused her to be so nauseated that she wanted to vomit, yet because it had been ages, she still felt a shred of danger!

How long had it been since she had last encountered it? Fifty years? No… A century?

"Yes! A 113 years ago, the item that damned imperial eunuch took out in his hand to slay me with carried this sensation!"

In her veins, this ancient memory exploded with a rumble, a kind of fright that had come bestowed by the heavens. In a flash, it took hold of her thoughts.

"Emperor Armament!!!" A resounding screech suddenly erupted from her throat, and she turned back to flee without the slightest hesitation!

At the same time, on the first level of the Heavens Law branch, the area was already filled with corpses. However, at this moment, a tremendous mechanical face on the ceiling opened its eyes without warning, zeroes and ones circulating within its eyes.

"Spiritual force fluctuation… Unable to be calculated… Spiritual force intensity… Unable to be calculated… Spiritual force persistence: three to five seconds…"

"Retrieving guidance procedures… Located on an organism in the Unrivaled Beneath the Heavens Arena. Retrieving all data. Recording…"

Before the machine's voice had fallen, it opened its mouth and a tiny green leaf, perhaps only one third the size of a palm, fluttered down unhurriedly. Subsequently, this green leaf, like it had transformed into a bolt of green lightning, charged towards the Unrivaled Beneath the Heavens Arena with a speed incapable of being viewed clearly by the naked eye!

Simultaneously, in all of China, ten pairs of eyes that seemed to be long dormant in slumber suddenly opened. Nearly synchronously, two words came out from their mouths.

"Emperor Armament?!"

* Green-Hill Mountain - I want to make note that this is an actual mountain in China where a nine-tailed fox is supposed to be. Mentioned in The Classic of the Mountains and Seas

** Author actually uses english here to for the spelled out swearing

*** "Fingers linked to heart" I feel this requires some explanation + I think this is considered a chengyu. The idea behind this phrase is that the fingers are used a lot for sensory task, so that when you hurt them, it goes straight to the heart and is very painful